Chapter 104: Holding Tight

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

That conversation seemed to have awakened a fiercely dominant part of Zhou Yunchen’s nature. In the confined space that belonged only to the two of them, his possessiveness surged uncontrollably, leaving Lu Yao’s throat raw and hoarse—sometimes so parched that he couldn’t even cry.

During estrus, Lu Yao’s emotions had been equally unstable. In order to protest the Federation General’s “atrocities,” he refused to eat more than a few bites whenever Zhou Yunchen brought food to the bedside to feed him. He claimed his stomach felt as if it were pressed up against his lungs and that he couldn’t force down another morsel. Zhou Yunchen had no choice but to give him glucose and saline sugar water to replenish the massive amount of fluids his body was losing.

Two days later, Zhou Yunchen realized Lu Yao’s estrus had ended. The room still reeked of the heady warmth left behind by fluids drying on skin and in the open air. Catnip pheromones tangled with guaiacwood, laced with faint traces of sweetness—like some rare and delicate spice that lingered, refusing to fade.

When it was all over, Zhou Yunchen prepared to carry Lu Yao to wash up—his back injury had nearly healed enough to bear water again. But with his eyes shut, Lu Yao shook his head in refusal.

Finding his expression calm and without discomfort, Zhou Yunchen was momentarily puzzled, but he didn’t dwell on it. He went to wash himself first, intending to help Lu Yao afterward.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, however, he found Lu Yao seated at the desk, bent over his work. His pen traced sweeping lines across a massive mecha blueprint, while the dim amber glow of the old desk lamp sharpened the intensity of his concentration.

If one ignored the fact that he wore nothing at all, or that he had just finished exerting himself so heavily that sweat still shone faintly across his narrow back, he might have resembled a solemn sculpture of a thinker, lost in grave contemplation.

Struck by the gravity of Lu Yao’s expression, Zhou Yunchen wrapped the towel around his waist before approaching. “Is something urgent?” he asked.

In the past, Lu Yao would simply cling to him, wait for his alpha to clean him, and then drift off into slumber in the warmth of the bath.

“No.” Lu Yao didn’t even lift his head. His bright eyes remained fixed on the blueprint. Reaching past Zhou Yunchen, he pulled a sheet of scratch paper and began calculating. “This is an old mecha design of mine. I suddenly thought of improvements.”

“Now?”

“Just now. When you were…” His pen didn’t pause, though a faint crease formed between his brows. “Well, not precisely at that moment. I suspect it was triggered when dopamine levels peaked and then crashed, causing protein hormones from the anterior pituitary to surge. That peculiar state pushed my brain into active, deep thought. Anyway, I suddenly solved a difficult problem.” His voice was calm and detached, the faint rasp stripped of desire, instead carrying a texture like cold stone. Zhou Yunchen understood. Estrus had ended. Rational Chief Engineer Lu had returned.

Not everyone spent their post-climactic clarity pondering how to iterate on mecha structures. Zhou Yunchen’s own mind would usually wander toward thoughts like: Am I dreaming? Is Lu Yao really with me? He didn’t refuse—I guess he liked that position, right? Should I try it again next time?

But soon enough, all such thoughts were drowned beneath a hollow, icy tide. His only remaining desire was to hold Lu Yao tightly in his arms and never let him go.

Lu Yao calculated at the desk for quite some time before the chill of sitting unclothed finally sank in. At last, he set down his pen and went to soak in a hot bath.

Zhou Yunchen’s gaze dropped to the pale, viscous traces left on the chair’s surface. Pressing his lips together in silence, he turned his head to watch Lu Yao’s retreating back. Even after so long, water trails still wound down his thighs, circled his ankles, and dried against the jut of bone across his feet. The bathroom door closed, shutting away the sight of his stumbling, weakened steps. Zhou Yunchen let out a soft laugh. No matter what, Lu Yao carried his scent inside and out.

He wiped the chair clean with tissues, then worked diligently—like a tireless little house spirit—to replace the soaked bedding with fresh sheets. After dressing, he went to prepare bread and milk for Lu Yao.

When Lu Yao came out of the bath, he ate while allowing Zhou Yunchen to dry his hair. Amid the hum of the retro hair dryer, Zhou Yunchen leaned close to murmur in his ear. “Want to sleep again after you eat?”

“I’m not tired,” Lu Yao said. “I don’t need to sleep.”

“You usually do after it ends.”

“We haven’t exactly been living by a normal schedule, have we?” Lu Yao analyzed for Zhou Yunchen. “If we had, then yes—after coming home from work, sleeping together before bed, you should sleep afterward. But these past few days we’ve been sleeping, doing it, then sleeping again. We’ve already slept enough.”

Despite his words, after he finished eating and his blood sugar rose, drowsiness crept over him. By the time Zhou Yunchen returned from clearing the dishes, Lu Yao was already stretched out on the bed, eyelids drooping, head nodding as he slipped toward sleep. Even so, in his fading awareness, he still remembered to wait for Zhou Yunchen.

When Zhou Yunchen closed the door behind him, Lu Yao cracked his eyes, shifted further into the mattress, and made room. The bed had always been meant for one, and though Lu Yao pressed himself against the wall to give space, the two of them had to lie so close their bodies touched, just like that makeshift bed Lu Yao had built by hand back on Distant Star. At least this time they had a soft mattress, clean sheets, and fluffy pillows.

Lu Yao sank into the pile of warmth, his ice-blue eyes lifting gently to watch Zhou Yunchen approach. He himself was not soft, yet he was no longer the raw, feverish wreck of estrus, no longer a molten flood or a devouring swamp threatening to swallow everything whole.

The pheromone-thick air had not yet cleared, but the scene before them made it feel dry and warm, like a winter hearth where pinewood burned alongside catnip, guaiacwood, and sweet almonds. The fire crackled and flared, glowing like Lu Yao’s gaze as it flickered with each step Zhou Yunchen took closer.

Enfolded by the heat, Zhou Yunchen sat on the bed. Lu Yao watched, waiting until he lay down before lifting the blanket so Zhou Yunchen could slip inside.

Zhou Yunchen edged over until his arm wrapped snugly around Lu Yao’s slim waist, only then no longer hanging half off the side of the bed.

Lu Yao leaned into him. His face, calm and expressionless, struck Zhou Yunchen as impossibly sweet. Resting his forehead against Zhou Yunchen’s chin, he closed his eyes and whispered with the last breath of wakefulness, “Remember to shave.”

The resting quarters at the abandoned base were spartan: just a bed, wardrobe, and desk with chairs. Above the desk, though, a broad milky screen was set into the wall, nearly eighty inches wide.

Zhou Yunchen had never known what it was and never touched it. The previous night, when Lu Yao had been sketching designs, he had switched it on. The screen glowed a deep blue, nothing more than a decoration, it seemed.

In the middle of the night, Zhou Yunchen woke to light. He remembered turning off the lamp before sleep, and now, puzzled, he searched the room until he saw the wall screen glowing with an orange-red light. The time in the corner read 6:12 a.m. Exhaling, he dropped back to his pillow.

So this was a circadian light regulator—meant to mimic daylight cycles for humans living long-term underground. Modern starships used solar lamps for full-ship synchronization. This kind of manual device he had only seen in history books.

Sensing the light, Lu Yao burrowed against Zhou Yunchen’s arm and hid his eyes. Seeing he wanted to sleep more, Zhou Yunchen didn’t move. At home, Lu Yao kept a steady rhythm, always waking naturally at nearly the same moment as the D-class wake-up alarm.

But here, safe at last, with water and food enough, they had abandoned reason for days, their time swallowed by reckless desire, their body clocks a mess.

Eventually Lu Yao opened his eyes. The fatigue he hadn’t felt during last night’s burst of inspiration now flooded him. Every part of his body ached, especially low in his back, where the strange, lingering sensation haunted him—as though his body still remembered the shape of Zhou Yunchen.

Drowsy and unwilling to move, he let his gaze wander over the man before him. His eyes traced Zhou Yunchen’s brows, nose, lips—like an X-ray scan sweeping down inch by inch. At some point during Lu Yao’s haze, Zhou Yunchen had shaved.

The General was striking, with thick, firm brows, a strong nose, and lips sharp and thin. In his crisp blue uniform, hair combed neatly back from his forehead, he radiated stern authority—like a sword tempered by both icy rivers and blazing fire. His tightened jaw and the faint battle-etched lines at the corners of his eyes gave his gaze a depth that cut straight through.

That Zhou Yunchen was nothing like the snow leopard. For all its title as a mountain king and blood-born predator, the great cat was nothing but a soft, thick-furred creature, his long tail a hypnotic toy, his round face and gray eyes softened further by the droop of its outer lashes. Unless baring its teeth, it lacked the ferocity of lions or tigers; instead it drew people in with plush warmth, begging to be touched.

Here, eyes closed and features eased, General Zhou was gentler, more at home. But soft and fluffy—could those words ever apply to Zhou Yunchen? Lu Yao frowned. No. They could not. Zhou Yunchen was, undeniably, his snow leopard. Yet the two were worlds apart in bearing and touch—except for…

Breath warmed Zhou Yunchen’s cheek. He knew Lu Yao was awake, staring at him, but for reasons buried deep inside, he kept his eyes closed and did not break the moment. Rustling sounded under the blanket. Lu Yao’s arm was moving.

Is he going to touch my face? Zhou Yunchen wondered, waiting. But what happened next made his scalp prickle. His whole body went rigid. Lu Yao’s hand slid downward—closing firmly around him.

Zhou Yunchen: ???

And then—he squeezed. Within ten seconds, Zhou Yunchen rapped his knuckles against the back of Lu Yao’s hand.

Author’s Note:

The construction of Chinese characters is traditionally explained through the “Six Principles”—pictographs, simple ideograms, compound ideograms, phono-semantic compounds, derivative cognates, and phonetic loans. In Shuowen Jiezi, it is written: “Pictographs are drawings that resemble the object, their forms bending with the body. The characters for ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ are examples.” If traced back far enough, the earliest characters were all pictographs. After thousands of years, modern Chinese still retains traces of this origin.

I wonder if today’s little character lesson reminded anyone of the quadratic equation lesson from the last book.

 

 

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